But let’s just remember when we talk non-stop about Benghazi and right-wing frames one little thing:

“Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in U.S.”

Look, it’s tragic that four people in a remote consulate were killed, but the idea that this is some sort of scandal is just absurd. Even worse, serious alleged journamalists pimping this bullshit for page views from wingnuts and for future tugjobs from Darrell Issa is just yet another nail in the coffin for allegedly respectable journalism. And let’s not even go into the wingnuts in Congress doing more damage than good.

A CIA security team rushed to the U.S. consulate in Libya’s eastern city of Benghazi less than 25 minutes after receiving the first call that the mission was under attack, while a second squad was dispatched by air from the capital, Tripoli, according to a timeline released on Thursday by U.S. intelligence officials.

The timeline is the most detailed accounting to date of the U.S. response to the attack on the consulate and was released to rebut news reports that U.S. officials had delayed a rescue.

“The officials on the ground in Benghazi responded to the situation . . . as quickly and as effectively as possible,” said a senior intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “There were no orders to anybody to stand down in providing support.”

The timeline also revealed that a nearby CIA annex came under attack twice during the events, with the second assault coming more than seven hours after Islamist extremists first stormed the consulate.

The only October Surprise here is that I spent the last two years defending Tapper (in between flaming him when I thought he was right). At his core, he’s a hack.

Obama’s Presidency has been almost completely free of scandal (really, it’s only Solyndra and Benghazi, both weak tea); as you know, you go to war campaign with the army scandal you have, not the army scandal you might want or wish to have at a later time.

Look, if hacks could milk Vince Foster’s death for years, this Bengazi thing ain’t going to go away.

More to the point, Obama carried out his plan to get Bin Laden. To the shame and embarrassment of both Dubya and Mittens. Obama is reversing the bullshit truism that Dems are ‘soft on defense’ so the GOP/Fox-o-sphere are gonna milk this because it’s in that crap-ass frame.

They’re gonna find a way to impeach second-term Obama, may as well be a small, sad tragedy that would, under Bush, have just been one of many security failures. Under the near guy, its a scandal of epic proportion.

One should always remember where Jake came from and how he became a celebrity journalist.

It was the Lewinski scandal. Back then Jake was a sometimes stringer at the Washington City Paper, the local alternative newsweekly. As the Lewinsky scandal broke, Jake wrote this tell all story about his blind date with the girl at the center of the scandal. The village loved it and he worked his date with Monica into his current position.

He is barnacle left over from that scandal just like Lucianne Goldberg’s little boy.

Good god, the Benghazi Truthers are thick on my Facebook page. It’s exactly like talking to 9/11 Truthers because they all do exactly the same thing: grab what little bit supports what you want to believe, make up a whole lot of shit, PRESIDENT BAD, “just asking questions,” “what did he know when did he know it,” etc.

The only difference is there’s a couple of networks, a political party, and a presidential candidate who’ve pushed Benghazi Truth all this time. 9/11 Truth never had this kind of institutional support.

Here is the deal on this issue, Mr Wingnut. We have consulates all over the world in restless violent countries, and no amount of Marine Guards or spooks with guns can protect a consulate under such a large and sustained attack. These outposts have to depend on local authorities of the host country’s when we don’t have an occupying military force, like with Iraq and Afghanistan. Somebody made the call to send the ambassador to this place, in the first place, when it was likely not a good idea, due to lack of security overall by the host country. That was a judgement call that the State Department makes all the time when trying to balance the desire for diplomacy with the inherent risks of such an outpost in a war torn country. It seems like a bad judgement call this time, but that would be most likely an honest mistake, and not some gross negligence and even darker motives conjured in the bowels of the right wing blogs. It would be kind of pointless to offer diplomatic olive branches behind a US combat battalion, that was likely the force needed to prevent this attack.

@GregB: Is there any doubt as to how the GOP media machine would have responded to a President Gore on 9/11?

Nail on the head, although I doubt Gore would have ignored warnings about Al Qaeda. He probably wouldn’t have stopped the attack, though who can know something like that? But regardless, Benghazi Truth is a clear template for what President Gore would have experienced had 9/11 happened on his watch.

Tapper has his moments, albeit few and far between, and he did show up here once and take his lumps. With that, I’ve maxed out on the good things I can say about him. He’s just another self-important hack who thinks that the work he does is both very important and very valuable, when in fact not only is it neither, it’s part of the problem in that it does nothing but perpetuate shit.

And two weeks after the PDB was finally made public, Pat Tillman got killed. Did the right even make a peep when it was revealed he was killed by friendly fire and Bush/Rumsfeld/Voldemort had known about it from day 1 even though they spent the next few months holding him up as a hero to maintain support for the war? I don’t remember much fuss during the 3 fracking years it took for the truth about that to come out.

I’m sure (actually I’m not after reading the news today, but maybe) there are still legitimate questions to be asked about Benghazi and I’m all for more disclosure, but as Louis CK would say, “Could you give it a minute?”

3,000 people die on 9/11/2001 due to a security breach: no one could have predicted, no one’s fault but the terrorists, keep moving, nothing to see here, etc.

4 people die on 9/11/2012 due to a security breach: OMG WORST SCANDAL EVER!!

ETA: Also, too — just realized that the “Obama watched the whole thing on camera, refused to do anything, and went to bed” is the wingnut analogue for Bush’s sitting in a classroom reading “My Pet Goat” on 9/11/01.

ETA #2: You’ll never go wrong betting that conservatives are projecting their own guilty feelings onto their opponents. All of their sublimated rage towards Bush over 9/11 is being redirected at Obama over Benghazi.

Am I missing something in the first link? Even when I followed the HH link to the Tapper story, I didn’t really see anything particularly helpful to the right wing noise machine, other than that the issue was being talked about in the first place. This seems to reflect more the desperation of the right-wingers flogging the story – pointing frenetically at a pretty unremarkable Tapper article – than the reporter himself.

I could be wrong. I’m not very familiar with the broader arc of Tapper’s reporting. But is there more to his ostensible support of BENGHAZIGATE OMG?

The more I think about it, the more I think a lot of this Benghazi rage is that they’re still pissed off at Bush’s failures that led to 9/11 but they couldn’t express them at the time because they couldn’t criticize the leader of their tribe. The obsession and rage is so out of proportion to what happened that I do think there’s something else underneath it (guilt for going along with the Iraq War?)

It really has been remarkable. Worth remembering that – after 8 years of silence over the billions wasted during W. – the Village freaked out over that GSA conference where they spent [puts pinky to lips] one million dollars.

There are still a lot of legitimate questions to ask, and I have no doubt that there will turn out to have been dozens of screw-ups all up and down the line that led to the deaths of those 4 people. (Like, how in the hell did his security detail lose track of the ambassador to the point that he ended up trapped in a burning building and dying of smoke inhalation?)

However, I’m pretty sure that the guy who thinks that government should function well will do a better and more honest investigation of how the situation turned into such a clusterfuck than the guys who think the only valid function of government is funneling money to their cronies.

@Mnemosyne: “ETA #2: You’ll never go wrong betting that conservatives are projecting their own guilty feelings onto their opponents. All of their sublimated rage towards Bush over 9/11 is being redirected at Obama over Benghazi.”

Another nail right on the head. Over 9/11, over the faulty intelligence that led to the Iraq war, that and lots more. And for the very temerity of Obama to be so squeaky clean up to now. That, too.

@The Dangerman: I agree with the thrust of your post, and I knew there’d be no epic October surprise at the top of the ticket – even from Biden, who despite running his mouth, doesn’t seem much into diapers or gay sex in airport bathrooms.

This though:
“really, it’s only Solyndra and Benghazi”

No, it’s not. That’s just poo the wingnuts are flinging, like everything else. You can say that stuff went wrong, even badly so, but it *wasn’t* scandalous. Tragic? Yes, in Benghazi’s case, but that’s not the same thing as a scandal at all.

@Joseph Nobles:
Oh yes, I definitely follow your meaning. I have several head-banging sessions/day reading wingers comment on…literally anything in the news and shoehorning in “…and seems not to care about the murder of four fine Americans.”

There are still a lot of legitimate questions to ask, and I have no doubt that there will turn out to have been dozens of screw-ups all up and down the line that led to the deaths of those 4 people. (Like, how in the hell did his security detail lose track of the ambassador to the point that he ended up trapped in a burning building and dying of smoke inhalation?)

Do you even realize you’re falling for the republican game by saying this?

My response is “You know, yeah, you’re right, let’s investigate Benghazi thoroughly right after 9/11 gets the same treatment at long last.”

@Speculum Spatula: Lovely. I don’t know if you’re too Truther for me or not, and I’d rather not know if you don’t mind. I spent nine years talking 9/11 Truthers out of their various trees, and I’ve left my woefully incomplete (but adequate enough) website on the controlled demolition idiocies up as my coda. It’s here:

My dad did thirty years in the State Department, including in post conflict zones where the word “post” didn’t so much apply (Bosnia late nineties, Afghanistan early 2000s). He certainly didn’t complain when he was assigned to nice European cities, but if asked, I think he’d say that American diplomacy can’t just limit itself to places like that and that in these other places, risk is part of the job. I know he drafted a will before going to Afghanistan, safe to say he knew what happened to Stevens and three of his people might happen to him. And I know he’s been as nauseated as any of us with Mittens’ reaction to the whole thing.

(Haven’t had the heart to tell him that his wingnut shit of a little brother’s been using Facebook to spread the good word of Benghazigate. So nice to know what his body would’ve been used for if it had been him dying in the line of duty with a Democrat in office).

That’s kind of my point, though — they don’t consciously feel guilty, because they’ve projected those feelings onto those other people, over there, who are the ones who should feel guilty.

But, to me, the outsized emotional response that a lot of people are reporting here in their interactions with conservatives over Benghazi signals that Benghazi is triggering feelings that they can’t deal with, so they have to shove those feelings off onto someone else as quickly as they can.

You’ll never go wrong betting that conservatives are projecting their own guilty feelings onto their opponents. All of their sublimated rage towards Bush over 9/11 is being redirected at Obama over Benghazi.

@Joseph Nobles: “Good god, the Benghazi Truthers are thick on my Facebook page. It’s exactly like talking to 9/11 Truthers because they all do exactly the same thing: grab what little bit supports what you want to believe, make up a whole lot of shit,…”

They’re a fun bunch, aren’t they? /snark

On a related note, I don’t know if purchasing stock in Reynolds and throwing some aluminum futures in your portfolio is actually a financially sound decision, but I found it cathartic. =) YMMV

Just saw the Pamela Gellar on Russell Brand’s horrible late night show (it came on after the hilarious The League on FX (Raffe: “Jerk off party? I like where this is going”)) Anyway I kept on to see its “Totally Unacceptable Opinion” segment featuring Gellar.

She came off like a shrill Real Housewives of New Jersey- type bitch in general, but really seemed to want to slip in Benghazi, and starting screaming “They called THREE times for help!” (Not-remarkable) mayhem ensued.

Benghazi is obviously a manufactured controversy. Clearly top mgmt crazy was going to make hay about any event that happened down the stretch, no matter how much of a stretch it was. Feed it down the food chain, fan the flames on Fox, RW radio and Pols, and and stay on it. That’s the standard playbook.

But I really wondered how far the food chain you have to go before you go from people knowingly playing the game to people that are buying into to the faux outrage? I don’t think it’s very far. And that’s why the crazies are so scary, not only do they really believe their own general BS, they believe their own manufactured BS.

@The Dangerman: They’ve been so damned desperate. Sometimes I wonder if they just find it UNPOSSIBLE that one of the Democrats, especially a blah man, doesn’t have any skeletons in his closet. Or maybe the smarter ones know the dumber ones will refuse to believe it’s true, so they can just make up what they like. It’s sort of a sick line of thinking – something Goebbels might have dreamed up even, so maybe not. Then again… meh..

Romney’s probably squeaky on the dead girl, live boy front, but his business dealings leave a lot to be mined – not to mention his more candid moments. ;) The wonderful Charles Pierce has taken to calling Willard The International Harvester (there’s a Bain video where he talks about harvesting companies.) That’s my favorite nickname for him thus far =)

@Mnemosyne: and @eemom:
Not guilt. Shame. They’ve been socially shamed for Bush’s actions. That’s different from actually feeling like they’re bad. They want to turn that stigma around on their enemies so that it can’t be used as a weapon against them anymore. It’s a practical decision based on their desire to move up the bullying hierarchy rather than a feeling of moral failure. See ‘blacks are the real racists’, ‘Obama’s Katrina’, and every other god damn thing.

This though:
“really, it’s only Solyndra and Benghazi”
__
No, it’s not. That’s just poo the wingnuts are flinging, like everything else. You can say that stuff went wrong, even badly so, but it wasn’t scandalous. Tragic? Yes, in Benghazi’s case, but that’s not the same thing as a scandal at all.

Thank you. There have been NO scandals from this administration. When was the last time we could say that? Carter’s administration?

Let them keep harping on the Benghazi thing. Just like the birther issue, nobody else except for foxNews and its gullible viewers cares on bit.

Seriously – if people cared it would have been an issue in this election. It isn’t. It is only an issue for foxNews. And even then, some of their TV personalities agree that it is not an issue. Both Giraldo and Condi Rice have disagreed with its own network on Bengazi.

Heck, FoxNews may force the House GOP to impeach Obama on this issue. Look how well that turned out for them in 1998 when they surprisingly lost seats in Congress. I doubt Boehner will go that far and he may not even have the votes.

The thing is that there is plenty of shit to throw at Obama about actual policies. Kill lists and drone strikes, Geithner and coziness to MotU, grand compromise bs, but they are all things the Goop loves. This is why we have Solyndra, Benghazi, and Birtherism. The parts the ReThugs hate are the parts the country likes. Obamacare is not a slur anymore. To Repubs, sure, but the rest of the country is starting to accept it as a good thing. The name, now embraced, is reinforced by the Presidents actions during and after Sandy. Obama cares. Solyndra is a bad bet, but not anything salacious enough to keep anyone’s attention. Most conservatives can’t even maintain a rant on it. They just trail off in Arglebargle. Benghazi is their best shot and it is a shit sandwich. The are chewing on it and trying to smile but they just get closer and closer to a Ni—clang moment.

@Paul: Actually, I think it worked out just fine for the GOP in the long term. They lost some seats during the 1998 congressional elections, but the wingnuts all did fine … and then the GOP won the presidential election in 2000. And they kept marching forward. The only lesson the GOP learned is that they got away with their outrageous BS, and pleased their base, and prospered in the long term.

The swarming tactic that the GOP is using over Benghazi has worked for them over and over again. It is a way of winning the day in media coverage, over and over again, and keeping the political opposition on the defensive.

Forget about Monica Lewinski. Remember the White House Travel Office scandal? Remember how the GOP actually had HEARINGS on that?

During WWI, US propagandists wanting to win popular support for intervention circulated atrocity tales such as the Hun chopping the hands off little Belgian girls. Where did they get that ghastly idea? There were no documented incidents of this, though they did shell the ancient Catholic University of Louvain and everything it contained) to rubble after being trolled early in the war.

But, as it happened, Belgium’s King Leopold II, who owned the Belgian Congo as his personal plantation, had a policy for motivating workers to harvest rubber tree sap. If they didn’t deliver the quota, their hands were cut off. Many workers were children, girls even. It was a great scandal, resulting in Leopold losing ownership of the colony in the early 1900s. By the time of WWI, people who still remembered the atrocities were probably fuzzy as to who had actually committed them, Belgians were probably clearer on the details, but if the stories won them aid and allies, so much the better.

Here is a sobering thought: The more television news people watch, the fewer facts they know; and the less people know in terms of basic facts, the more likely they are to back Mitt Romney or any Republican in general.